Scribner’s  Magazine 


VOL.  XXVIII  OCTOBER,  1900  NO.  4 


A  Gate  of  the  Old  City,  Moscow. 

RUSSIA  OF  TO-DAY 

BY  HENRY  NORMAN 


THE  TWO  CAPITALS 

USSIA  ! 

What  a  flock  of  thoughts  take 
wing  as  the  word  strikes  the  ear  ! 
Does  any  word  in  any  language,  except 
the  dear  name  of  one’s  own  land,  mean  as 
much  to-day  ? 

What  is  Russia  ?  The  unfettered,  irre¬ 
sponsible,  limitless,  absolute  rule  of  one 
man  over  a  hundred  millions  of  his  fel¬ 
lows — is  that  it  ?  The  ikon  in  the  corner 
of  every  room  where  the  language  is 
spoken,  the  blue-domed  basilica  in  every 
street  of  great  cities,  the  long  -  haired 


priests  chanting  in  deep  bass,  the  pedes¬ 
trian  ceaselessly  crossing  himself,  the  Holy 
Synod,  whose  God-given  task  it  is  to  co¬ 
erce  or  to  cajole  a  heathen  world  to  ortho¬ 
doxy — is  that  Russia  ?  Or  is  it  the  soci¬ 
ety  of  the  capital,  speaking  all  languages, 
familiar  with  all  literatures,  practising  every 
art,  lapped  in  every  luxury,  esteeming  man¬ 
ners  more  highly  than  morals  ?  Or  is  it 
the  vast  and  nearly  roadless  country,  where 
settlements  are  to  distances  like  fly-specks 
to  window-panes ;  where  the  conveni¬ 
ences,  the  comforts  and  the  decencies  of 
civilization  may  be  sought  in  vain  outside 
the  towns  and  away  from  the  lines  of  rail¬ 
way  ;  where  entire  villages  are  the  prey  of 
unnamable  disease ;  where  seven  people 


Copyright,  1900,  by  Charles  Scribner’s  Sons.  All  rights  reserved. 


i 


388 


Russia  of  To-Day 


out  of  every  ten  can  neither  read  nor 
write  ? 

Siberia  is  Russia — five  million  square 
miles,  in  which  whole  countries  are  a  quiv¬ 
ering  carpet  of  wild-flowers  in  spring,  a 
rolling  grain-field  in  autumn,  an  ice-bound 
waste  in  winter,  stored  full  of  every  min¬ 
eral,  crossed  by  the  longest  railway  in  the 
world,  and  chiefly  inhabited  by  a  popula¬ 
tion  of  convicts  and  exiles. 

Central  Asia  is  Russia — a  million  and  a 
half  square  miles  of  barren  desert  and  irri¬ 


gated  oasis,  the  most  famous  cities  of  Asia 
and  the  greatest  river,  a  few  years  ago  the 
hot-bed  of  Mussulman  fanaticism,  prob¬ 
ably  the  cradle  of  the  human  race,  and 
possibly  the  scene  of  its  most  fateful  con¬ 
flict. 

The  Eastern  Question  is — how  will 
Russia  try  again  to  get  Constantinople  ? 
The  Far  Eastern  Question  is — will  Russia 
succeed  in  dominating  China  ?  The  ques¬ 
tion  of  questions  for  the  British  Empire  is 
— will  Russia  attempt  to  invade  India  ? 

The  Triple  Alliance  is  a  league  against 
Russia.  The  Dual  Alliance  is  Russia’s  re¬ 
ply.  Russia  called  the  nations  to  the  Con¬ 
ference  of  Peace. 

It  would  be  easier  to  say  what  is  not 
Russia.  In  world-affairs,  wherever  you 
turn  you  see  Russia  ;  whenever  you  listen 
you  hear  her.  She  moves  in  every  path ; 
she  is  mining  in  every  claim.  The  “  creep¬ 
ing  murmur”  of  the  world  is  her  footfall — 
the  “  poring  dark  ”  is  her  veil.  To  the 
challenge  of  the  nations,  as  they  peer 


from  their  borders,  comes  ever  the  same 
reply — - 

“  Who  goes  there  ?  ” 

“  Russia  /  ” 

A  troika  dashes  down  the  Nevski  Pros¬ 
pect,  the  horse  in  the  shafts  trotting  des¬ 
perately,  the  others  galloping  on  either 
side,  their  heads  bent  outward.  Over  the 
housetops  rise  the  five  blue  bulbous  domes, 
like  inverted  balloons,  that  crown  the 
church  now  standing  where  Alexander  II. 


fell.  At  the  corner  of  the  great  bazaar 
is  a  little  votive  chapel  to  the  saint  who 
caused  people  to  subscribe  so  liberally  to 
rebuild  the  bazaar  when  it  was  burned,  and 
as  they  pass,  the  well-to-do  cross  them¬ 
selves  and  the  poor  doff  their  caps.  All 
these  are  incongruities.  They  look  as  odd 
as  a  leather  bottel  would  amid  silver  and 
cut-glass.  They  are  bits  of  real  Russia — 
St.  Petersburg  is  a  foreign  city,  and  a  hy¬ 
brid  one  to  boot.  Any  quarter  of  it  would 
be  at  home  in  Paris  or  Potsdam  or  Pesth. 
Peter  the  Great  built  it  in  the  Neva 
swamps  as  “  a  window  toward  Europe,” 
in  Algarotti’s  memorable  phrase ;  and  that 
is  precisely  what  it  remains.  For  a  long 
time  every  educated  Russian  wished  to 
make  his  country  like  western  Europe  ; 
he  resented  above  all  things  being  called 
uncivilized,  and  civilization  meant  to  him 
French  architecture  and  English  manners. 
St.  Petersburg  is  the  embodiment  of  this 
wish.  Provincial  Russians  still  hugely  ad¬ 
mire  their  capital,  but  if  it  were  to  be  re- 


The  Fortress  and  Cathedral  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul,  St.  Petersburg. 


The  Nevski  Prospect,  St.  Petersburg. 


The  Kremlin,  Moscow,  from  the  Kamenny  Bridge. 


built  now  it  would  resemble  Moscow  and 
not  Milan.  The  fashion  of  imitating  the 
West  has  passed  ;  to-day  to  be  patriotic  is 
to  be  Russian,  and  so  far  from  following 
the  mode  of  the  outside  world,  to  wait  con¬ 
fidently  till  the  outside  world  shall  learn 
that  the  Russian  mode  is  better  and  shall 
lay  aside  its  heathenism,  its  parliament- 
arianism,  its  socialism,  the  license  it  calls 
liberty,  and  all  its  other  wickednesses, 
and  walk  in  the  only  path  of  religious  truth 
and  social  security.  So  to  the  Russian,  St. 
Petersburg  is  no  longer  Russia,  while  to 
the  visitor  it  is  cosmopolitan  and  there¬ 
fore,  as  a  whole,  uninteresting. 

I  say,  as  a  whole,  for  the  city  of  Peter 
the  Great  and  all  his  successors  cannot  fail 
to  contain  many  things  to  arrest  the  atten¬ 
tion.  Its  churches,  for  example,  are  the 
most  splendid  of  any  modern  churches  in 
the  world.  In  other  countries  cathedrals 
are  magnificent  through  the  faith  and  the 
munificence  of  men  of  old  time  ;  here  our 
contemporaries  have  set  their  creed  in 
gold  and  gems.  St.  Isaac’s  Cathedral, 
from  whose  magnificent  dome  the  best 
view  of  the  city  is  obtained,  whose  gloom 
hides  untold  wealth  upon  its  altars,  whose 
four  sides  of  great  granite  monoliths  are 

39° 


unsurpassed,  and  whose  pillars  of  malachite 
and  lapis  lazuli  are  unapproached  else¬ 
where,  was  consecrated  the  year  in  which 
I  was  born.  A  semicircular  colonnade 
leads  from  the  Mevski  to  the  cathedral  of 
our  wonder-working  Lady  of  Kazan, 
where  the  name  of  the  Almighty  blazes  in 
diamonds,  where  half  a  ton  of  silver  marks 
an  outburst  of  Cossack  piety,  where  pearls 
and  sapphires  seem  to  have  no  value,  so 
lavishly  are  they  strewed,  and  it  dates 
from  1811.  One  church  only,  meagrely 
endowed  in  comparison,  is  profoundly 
rich  in  association.  A  spire  like  a  needle 
rises  almost  from  the  Neva,  and  at  its  base 
are  the  heavy  casemates  where  the  water 
laps  drearily  forever  at  inscrutable  dun¬ 
geons  behind.  This  is  the  island  where 
Peter  first  established  his  camp,  and  where 
his  original  little  log  cabin,  enclosed  in 
protective  roof  and  walls,  still  stands.  The 
church  and  the  dungeons  are  alike  dedi¬ 
cated  to  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul.  All  you 
can  see  of  the  prison  whose  name  has  been 
made  a  synonym  of  horror  are  the  dank 
walls,  the  water-gate,  and  the  long  row  of 
one-storyed  barracks  inside.  And  it  is 
useless  to  ask  questions.  Very  few  people 
know  what  passes  within,  and  these  few 


Russia  of  To-Day 


391 


never  open  their  lips  But  the  horror  has 
departed  from  this  place,  for  nowadays 
prisoners  of  State  are  carried  to  the  fortress 
of  Schlusselburg,  also  an  island  in  the 
Neva,  forty  miles  away.  Concerning  this 
prison  absolute  secrecy  prevails.  I  made 
the  acquaintance  of  an  intimate  relation 
of  the  Governor,  and  he  assured  me  that 
never  in  the  closest  family  talk  had  he  ever 
heard  a  syllable  concerning  it.  So  far  as 
silence  goes,  it  is  indeed  a  living  grave, 
the  stony  replica  of  the  closed  lips  of  au¬ 
tocracy.  But  all  the  world  may  drive 
through  the  low  red-brick  gate  of  the 
citadel  to  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Peter  and 
St.  Paul,  and  gaze  through  its  narrow 
gloom  upon  all  the  mouldering  flags  of 
conquered  enemies  and  all  the  rusting 
keys  of  surrendered  towns.  These  are  but 
poor  things,  however,  to  what  lies  below 
them — the  long  rows  of  square  white  mar¬ 
ble  tombs,  where,  each  under  the  same  gilt 
cross  and  with  nothing  but  a  name  to  mark 
the  difference,  repose  forever  all  the  Tsars, 


save  one,  of  all  the  Russias,  since  Tsars 
and  Russia  were. 

Of  this  long  line,  two  only  impress  their 
personality  in  St.  Petersburg  to-day.  One, 
the  first,  the  great  Peter,  who  did  every¬ 
thing,  designed  everything,  foresaw  every¬ 
thing.  The  other,  the  emancipator,  whose 
blood  stained  the  street  nineteen  years 
ago,  impressive  because  of  the  contents  of 
one  little  room.  At  the  Hermitage,  once 
Catharine’s  pavilion,  but  since  1850  the 
magnificent  home  of  the  world-famous 
collection  of  pictures,  you  may  see  Peter 
in  his  habit  as  he  lived.  A  life-size  wax 
portrait  model,  sitting  in  his  own  chair, 
dressed  in  the  very  clothes  he  wore,  grasp¬ 
ing  the  sword  given  to  him  by  that  de¬ 
posed  ruler  of  Poland  once  called  “  the 
strong,”  shows  you  his  great  height  and 
his  vigilant  black  eyes.  In  a  glass  case 
is  the  yellow  charger  he  rode  on  that  July 
day  at  Pultava  when  he  founded  Russia 
upon  the  ruins  of  Sweden,  and  beside  it, 
almost  as  big — for  the  moth-eaten  handi- 


The  Kremlin  Square  and  Memorial  of  Alexander  111.,  Moscow 


392 


Russia  of  To-Day 


Gate  and  Chapel  of  the  Old  City,  Moscow, 


work  of  this  early  taxidermist  must  have 
shrunk  pitifully  since  it  bore  that  royal 
load — runs  his  favorite  yellow  hound.  All 
around  are  hundreds  of  his  instruments 
and  lathes  and  tools,  and  the  things  those 
strong  busy  hands  made  with  them.  And 
an  attendant,  observing  with  pleased  un¬ 


ity  it  has  been  done,  these  smooth 
roads,  these  solid  embankments  to  pro¬ 
tect  the  edges  of  the  lagoons,  these 
miles  of  silver  birches  and  furs  and 
other  graceful  trees  !  Indeed,  this  is  a 
reflection  that  rises  often  to  one’s  lips 
in  Russia,  meaning  not  only  what 
money — and  money  has  always  wel¬ 
tered  forth — but  what  time,  what  la¬ 
bor,  what  tenacious  clinging  to  an 
ideal  seen  afar  off  !  Flying  along  these 
soft  roads  come  the  Russian  horses, 
beautiful  black  stallions,  flecked  with 
white  foam,  driven  with  outstretched 
arms  by  a  coachman  of  Gargantuan 
size  in  his  wadded  gown  of  blue  cloth. 
He  calls  out  as  he  goes,  he  leans  over 
his  beasts,  his  narrow  waistbelt  of  east¬ 
ern  silk  emphasizes  his  enormous  girth, 
the  reins,  half  of  leather  and  half  of 
blue  or  orange  webbing,  flap  their  buc¬ 
kled  sides  upon  the  horses’  flanks — he 
scorns  a  whip.  The  master  or  mistress 
of  all  this  sits  firmly  back  in  the 
diminutive  dark  blue  or  green  drosky — a 
light  phaeton  with  tiny  front  wheels — 
and  the  big  Orloff  plunges  forward,  his 
wooden  arched  collar  framing  his  proud 
head,  his  flowing  tail  streaming  out  be¬ 
hind  —  it  is  the  most  familiar  sight  in 
St.  Petersburg  and  an  exhilarating  one. 


ticipation  your  great  interest,  selects 
from  a  group  of  walking-sticks  his 
heavy  iron  staff,  and  catches  it  as  it 
falls  from  your  unready  grasp,  and 
then,  placing  a  tall  stick  upright  be¬ 
side  you,  shows  you  the  notch  at 
Peter’s  height  a  foot  above  your  head. 

Since  Peter  the  Great  foresaw  so 
many  things,  it  is  possible  enough 
that  when  he  crushed  the  aboriginal 
frogs  of  the  Neva  marshes  beneath  his 
heel  he  foresaw  the  Island  Parks  too. 
The  Neva,  with  its  broad,  slow,  silver 
flood,  stealing  to  the  sea  by  many 
ways,  holds  netted  certain  flat  islands, 
called  Kamennoi  and  Yelagin,  in  its 
watery  strands,  and  these  have  been 
laid  out  and  planted  with  an  art  which 
worked  hand  in  hand  with  nature. 
The  result  is  a  series  of  parks,  among 
which  summer  villas,  called  date  has , 
nestle  and  sandy  roads  wind  fanci¬ 
fully,  but  all  with  an  artlessness  of 
which  other  European  parks  have  lost 
the  secret.  But  with  what  a  prodigal- 


The  Home  of  the  Romanoffs,  Moscow. 


The  Cathedral  of  St.  Basil  the  Beatified,  Moscow — Sixteenth  Century. 

Napoleon  ordered  his  soldiers  to  “  destroy  that  Mosque,"  but  they  used  it  as  a  cavalry  stable  instead. 


Suddenly,  “  B-r-r-r  !  ”  says  the  driver,  the 
horse  pulls  up  and  you  are  at  the  Point, 
with  one  of  the  loveliest  water-views  in  the 
world  before  you.  From  the  end  of  the 
farthest  island  you  gaze  toward  Kron¬ 
stadt  down  the  Neva,  so  shallow  in  her 
vast  width  that  only  a  few  yachts  flutter 
across  her  breast,  for  the  steamers  may 
not  venture  out  of  a  dredged  channel  be¬ 
tween  close-set  buoys.  After  the  green 
shade  of  the  woods  and  the  little  eye-like 
pools  looking  out  of  their  seclusion,  the 
open  of  blue  sky  seems  enormous,  the 
water  is  a  silver  floor,  and  something  in 
this  peep  into  the  infinite — it  may  be  the 
tumble  of  opalescent  clouds  piled  upon 
the  horizon — reminds  you  of  the  other 
great  water-view  of  Europe,  down  the 
Sea  of  Marmora.  To  my  eye,  the  isl¬ 
and  parks  of  Petersburg — they  are  within 
half  an  hour  of  the  centre  of  the  city 


— are  the  most  beautiful  town  drive  in 
Europe. 

But  though  the  Neva  brings  beauty,  it 
brings  misery,  too.  Along  its  quays  in 
the  populous  parts  of  the  city  are  thou¬ 
sands  of  cellar-dwellings,  where  the  poor 
live.  When  a  certain  wind  blows  back 
from  the  sea  the  river  rises  and  floods 
these  tenements,  and  the  wretched  inhab¬ 
itants  have  to  forsake  them  till  the  water 
subsides,  when  they  return  with  their  bits 
of  furniture  to  their  reeking  homes.  A 
paternal  government,  however,  thought¬ 
fully  causes  a  gun  to  be  fired  from  the 
citadel  when  the  river  is  rising,  and  its 
boom  across  the  waters  warns  the  cellar- 
dwellers  to  escape.  St.  Petersburg,  it  is 
perhaps  needless  to  add,  is  an  unhealthy 
place,  damp  and  depressing,  and  in  sum¬ 
mer,  when  water  is  low  and  sewage  is 
high,  the  canals  with  which  it  is  intersect- 

393 


394 


Russia  of  To-Day 


ed  smell  horribly.  Only  in  winter,  when 
damp  and  other  evil  things  are  frozen 
solid,  is  it  bracing  and  clean,  and  even 
then,  you  must  remember,  that  every 
window  in  every  house  is  hermetically 
sealed. 

The  little  room  I  have  spoken  of  as 
conveying  the  impression  of  the  second 
personality  is  in  the  Winter  Palace.  After 
endless  marchings  through  the  countless 
chambers,  great  and  small,  from  the 
Throne  Room  to  the  private  apartments 
of  visiting  royalties,  which  seem  in  al¬ 
most  all  the  palaces  of  continental  Europe 
to  have  been  designed  by  the  same  archi¬ 


tect  and  furnished  by  the  same  uphol¬ 
sterer,  the  official  with  you  knocks  at  a 
door  and  retires.  The  door  is  slowly 
opened  by  an  old  man  with  many  medals. 
He  is  the  keeper  of  the  private  apart¬ 
ments  of  Alexander  II.,  which  have  been 
sacredly  preserved  exactly  as  he  left  them. 
On  Sunday  morning,  March  13,  1881, 
the  Tsar  was  writing  in  his  room,  smoking 
a  cigarette.  It  was  his  custom  to  inspect 
some  regiment  on  Sunday  mornings,  and 
on  this  day  he  was  due  at  the  parade  of 
the  marines  in  the  Michael  Riding  School. 
Five  times  had  the  Nihilists  tried  to  kill 
him,  and  at  least  twice  they  had  nearly 


Count  Tolstoy  at  Home. 


Russia  of  To-Day 


395 


Is 


succeeded.  They  almost  blew  up  the  are  his  toilet  articles — -a  plain  small  set  of 
Imperial  train,  and  they  actually  blew  up  bottles  and  brushes,  from  a  rusty  morocco 
the  guard-room  and  dining-room  of  the  folding  case,  evidently  bought  in  England 
Winter  Palace  and  failed  only  because  before  we  invented  the  modern  luxurious 
the  Imperial  dinner  had  been  arranged  dressing-bag.  It  is  all  modest  beyond 

belief,  and  the  brushes 
are  half  worn.  Here  was 
a  monarch  who  did  not 
care  to  spend  any  of  his 
incalculable  wealth  upon 
personal  luxuries.  The 
walls  of  the  room  are 
covered  by  bookcases,  all 
quite  full  of  books  obvi¬ 
ously  read.  Among 
them,  just  behind  his 
chair,  I  noticed  the  two 
volumes  of  Drumont’s 
La  France  Juive ,  show¬ 
ing  signs  of  much  hand- 


Yasnaya  Polyana.  Count  Tolstoy’s  Home  (front  and  back). 


for  half  an  hour  later  than 
usual,  in  order  that  a 
royal  visitor,  Prince  Alex¬ 
ander  of  Hesse,  might  be 
present.  The  air  was 
once  more  full  of  terror¬ 
ist  threats,  and  the  Tsar’s 
son  and  heir  and  his  most 
trusted  adviser,  begged 
him  not  to  go  to  the  in¬ 
spection.  But  Alexan¬ 
der,  brave  and  obstinate 
and  fatalistic,  was  not  to 
be  deterred.  He  laid  his 
half  -smoked  cigarette 
upon  an  ash-tray,  picked 
up  a  loosely  folded  clean 
handkerchief  from  the  table,  slipped  his 
little  silver-plated,  ivory- handled  revolver 
into  his  pocket,  buckled  on  his  sword  and 
left  the  room.  An  hour  later  he  was  car¬ 
ried  back,  fast  bleeding  to  death,  one  leg 
shattered  to  the  thigh,  the  other  to  the 
knee,  and  placed  upon  the  narrow  iron 
bed  in  the  recess,  and  there  he  breathed 
his  last. 

As  the  room  was,  so  it  remains.  The 
half-smoked  cigarette  lies  upon  the  ash¬ 
tray  in  a  glass  tube.  The  little  revolver 
lies  before  the  mirror.  Upon  each  of  the 
tables  and  several  of  the  chairs  is  a  loose¬ 
ly  folded  clean  handkerchief,  for  it  was 
the  Tsar’s  wish  to  have  one  of  these 
always  within  reach  of  his  hand.  Here 


ling.  Opposite  the  foot  of  the  camp-bed 
hangs  a  portrait,  rather  crudely  painted,  of 
a  little  daughter  who  died,  and  below  the 
portrait,  neatly  folded,  lies  the  last  frock 
she  wore,  which  her  father  kept  always 
by  him.  It  is  all  extraordinarily  affect¬ 
ing.  Had  he  lived,  I  could  never  by  any 
chance  have  thus  known  his  private  life 
and  looked  at  his  intimate  belongings. 
He  would  have  been  merely  the  great 
remote  Tsar,  the  Liberator  of  the  Serfs, 
the  suppressor  of  Poland,  the  war-maker 
against  Turkey,  the  object  of  the  Nihilists’ 
bloodthirsty  pursuit.  But  because  he 
died  a  royal  martyr,  I  may  see  him  for 
the  man  he  was,  learn  his  little  personal 
ways,  see  what  he  carried  in  his  pockets, 


The  Gateway  of  Yasnaya  Polyana. 


know  how  simple  a  life  he  chose  to  live 
inside  his  outer  shell  of  impenetrable 
pomp,  and  be  permitted  to  discern  how 
he  worshipped  the  memory  of  his  little 
dead  child.  By  more  vivid  means  still, 
however,  is  the  memory  of  Alexander  II. 
nourished  in  St.  Petersburg.  In  three 
places  is  his  actual  shed  blood  to  be  seen. 
As  I  stood  by  his  bed,  my  own  guide, 
taking  advantage  of  the  old  official’s 
back  being  turned,  lifted  the  coverlet  and 
pointed  silently  to  the  broad  rusty  stain 
upon  the  faded  linen.  The  act  was  an 
outrage,  and  I  reproved  him  sharply. 
Again,  in  a  glass  case  by.  the  altar  of  the 
Cathedral  of  the  Transfiguration  is  the 
uniform  Alexander  wore  upon  the  day  of 
his  death,  and  the  scabbard  of  his  sword 
bears  a  wide  splash  of  rusty  red.  Finally, 
the  very  paving  stones  and  soil  upon 
which  his  torn  body  lay  and  bled  have 
been  preserved  and  will  remain  forever  in 
the  gorgeous  Memorial  Church  of  the  Res¬ 
urrection,  built  over  them.  His  descend¬ 
ants  have  indeed  determined  that  here,  too, 
the  populace,  as  Antony  would  have  it  do 
in  Rome,  shall  mark  the  blood  of  Caesar. 

396 


St.  Petersburg  might  be  anywhere,  and 
without  turning  one’s  self  into  a  guide-book 
(precisely  what  I  would  wish  to  avoid) 
there  is  hardly  anything  in  it  to  describe. 
My  impressions  of  it  have  only  covered  a 
few  pages  ;  but  it  would  be  easy  to  write 
for  a  year  about  Moscow.  Here  is  Rus¬ 
sia  indeed — every  bit  of  her  faithfully  rep¬ 
resented.  The  magnificent  white  railway 
station,  with  “  God  save  the  Tsar  ”  in  per¬ 
manent  gas-letters  over  the  portal,  is  where 
the  Great  Trans-Siberian  train  starts  for 
Vladivostok  and  Port  Arthur.  (We  shall 
steam  out  of  it,  together,  reader,  you  and 
I,  before  long.)  These  strange,  dark- 
robed  men,  sitting  by  themselves  at  the 
bourse,  turbaned  or  fur-hatted,  are  Rus¬ 
sian  subjects  from  Central  Asia.  (We 
shall  see  them  at  home  by  and  by.)  Rus¬ 
sia  is  a  great  manufacturing  country  now; 
Moscow  is  one  of  the  manufacturing  cities 
of  the  world,  and  her  cotton-spinning 
mills  think  nothing  of  paying  sixty  per 
cent,  dividends.  Napoleon  looms  large 
in  Russian  history ;  from  those  low  hills 
a  few  miles  away  he  looked  down  upon 
the  splendid  prey  he  was  about  to  seize  ; 


397 


Russia  of  To-Day 


through  this  gate  he  entered  the  citadel  ; 
in  that  church  his  horses  were  stabled.  A 
Romanoff  Tsar  rules  Russia  ;  this  is  the 
house  where  the  first  Romanoff  to  become 
a  Tsar  lived,  as  a  simple  seigneur  ;  and 
here  are  the  tombs  of  all  the  Ruriks  and 
Romanoffs  who  ruled  when  St.  Peters¬ 
burg  was  a  swamp.  Russia  is  a  theoc¬ 
racy  ;  Moscow  is  the  holy  city,  conse¬ 
crated  and  consecrating.  Under  whatever 
aspect  Russia  of  to-day  presents  herself 
to  you,  in  Moscow  you  may  find  it  em¬ 
bodied,  for  Russia  sprang  from  Moscow 
and  the  Dukes  of  Muscovy  laid  her  foun¬ 
dation-stones. 

It  is  the  most  highly  colored  city  in 
Europe,  to  begin  with,  and  it  displays  the 
quaintest  architecture.  To  me  it  recalled 
at  once,  of  course  with  many  differences, 
Seoul,  the  capital  of  Korea.  Sometimes, 
when  its  old  buildings  rise  above  trees,  it 
suggests  the  embowered  eaves  and  ridges 
of  Peking,  seen  from  the  walls.  Its  many 
white-washed  buildings  remind  you  of  the 
towns  of  Bosnia  and  Herzegovina.  Its 
pavement,  rough  stones  on  which  the 
wheels  make  so  deafening  a  noise  that 
conversation  is  impossible  as  you  drive,  is 


almost  as  bad  as  that  of  Belgrad,  where 
you  may  quite  well  fracture  your  skull  in 
a  drive  down  the  main  street  in  a  closed 
carriage.  But  what  you  notice  first  in 
Moscow  and  forget  last  is  its  ecclesiastical 
red  and  blue  and  green  and  gold. 

The  second  capital  of  Russia  has  a 
population  of  a  million,  it  is  the  commer¬ 
cial  centre,  and  the  greatest  Russian  man¬ 
ufacturing  town,  and  it  has  four  hundred 
and  fifty  churches ;  but  to  the  visitor 
Moscow  is  the  Kremlin,  and  the  Kremlin 
is  Moscow.  The  remaining  forty-nine 
fiftieths  of  the  city  do  not  count.  The 
learned  have  not  yet  agreed  what  ‘‘Krem¬ 
lin  ”  means — probably  fortress,  or  Acrop¬ 
olis,  or  central  official  quarter,  for  many 
other  towns  have  one.  Actually  it  is  an 
isosceles  triangle,  one  side  resting  upon 
the  river  Moskva,  and  all  three  marked 
by  enormous  pyramidal  walls  of  pale  pink 
brick,  broken  at  intervals  by  square  watch- 
towers  and  pierced  by  five  gates.  One 
of  these  leads  from  the  river — a  prison  or 
secret  gate — and  everybody  who  passes 
under  another,  the  Gate  of  the  Redeemer, 
so  called  from  the  miracle-working  portrait 
over  it,  must  remove  his  hat.  The  best 


Women  in  the  Sunday  Market,  Moscow. 


flaSt 


■ 


Russia  of  To-Day 


399 


view  is  from  the  Kamenny  Bridge,  and  is  is  a  stratum  of  enthusiastic  idealism  of 
shown m  my  photograph  |p.  39oJ.  Without  disbelief  in  the  thing  that  is  and  belief  in 
color,  however,  the  Kremlin  loses  half  its  the  thing  that  may  be.  Scratch  a  Mus- 
charm.  Inside  the  triangle,  the  visitor  is  covite  and  you  find  a  transcendentalism 
conducted  through  the  arsenal  square,  past  Drop  into  conversation  with  your  neigh- 
eight  bundled  and  seventy-five  cannons  bor  in  the  railway  carriage  and  in  ten 
of  all  shapes  and  sizes  which  Russia  has  minutes  you  will  be  disputing  hotly  over 
at  one  time  or  another  captured  from  her  some  purely  abstract  proposition;  con- 


enemies  (Napo 
leon  contributed 
three  hundred  and 
sixty-five) ;  to  the 
top  of  the  tower 
of  Ivan  Veliki, 
otherwise  the 
Englishman,  John 
Villiers,  who  de¬ 
signed  it,  whence 
the  multi-colored 
panorama  sur¬ 
passes  anything  of 
the  kind  you  have 
ever  seen  or  will 
see  ;  through  the 
Great  Palace, 
built  upon  the 
stone  basements 
which  are  older 
than  Tsars;  to  the 
tombs  of  the  Ru- 
riks  and  Roman- 


Broken  Down  on  the  Steppe— Tapping  the  Telegraph  for  Help. 


offs ;  and  to  the  Cathedral  of  the  Assump¬ 
tion,  where  Tsars  first  wear  their  crown.  It 
is  an  area  of  infinite  interest,  and  he  must 
be  dull  indeed  who  is  not  brought  to  a 
standstill  more  than  once  by  the  pressure 
of  his  own  reflections.  My  object  in  these 
papers,  however,  is  not  to  re-describe  well- 
known  sights  and  places,  but  to  seek,  in 
both  familiar  and  unfamiliar  scenes,  the 
underlying  facts  and  motives  and  mean¬ 
ings  which  go  to  make  the  Russia  of 
to-day,  and  from  which  the  Russia  of  to¬ 
morrow  may  be  inferred.  Therefore  I 
leave  the  Kremlin  and  old  Moscow  to  the 
guide-books  and  many  previous  travellers, 
and  speak  only  of  the  longer  thoughts 
this  Holy  Mother-City  suggests. 

d  he  name  of  Moscow  will  always 
bring  back  to  my  mind,  before  anything 
else,  my  visit  to  Tolstoy.  And  indeed, 
he  is  as  much  a  part  of  Russia,  as  signifi¬ 
cant  of  Russian  character,  as  prophetic 
of  Russian  development,  as  the  Kremlin 
itself.  At  the  bottom  of  every  Russian 


nected,  nine  times 
out  of  ten,  with 
the  possibility  of  a 
perfect  social 
state.  With  us  the 
classes  of  those 
who  do  things  and 
those  who  dream 
them  are  sharply 
dissevered;  the 
typical  Russian  is 
doer  and  dreamer 
in  one,  and  Tol¬ 
stoy  is  the  dream¬ 
er  incarnate  in  ev¬ 
ery  Russian  heart. 

Tula,  “  at  once 
the  Sheffield  and 
the  Birmingham 
of  Russia,”  as  a 
guide  -  book  pre¬ 
tentiously  informs 
you,  is  a  night’s 


journey  from  Moscow,  and  Yasnaya 
Polyana,  Count  Tolstoy’s  estate,  is  seven 
miles  from  Tula.  It  is  a  delightful  drive 
in  the  crisp  bright  autumn  morning  ; 
there  is  actually  some  good  farming  to  be 
seen — a  rare  thing  in  this  country — long 
plantations  of  little  forest  trees,  miles  of 
half-grown  wood.  Then  over  a  hill-top 
comes  an  aspect  of  very  modern  Russia — 
the  huddle  of  buildings  forming  a  great 
ironworks,  huge  chimneys  belching  smoke, 
the  clang  of  the  rolling-mill,  the  enormous 
slag  heaps.  An  ant-like  stream  of  men 
pours  out,  and  across  the  road  are  the 
long  barracks  and  the  half-underground 
hovels  where  they  live.  They  are  not 
attractive  men,  either,  and  we  are  glad  to 
be  in  the  green  country  once  more,  with 
the  quiet  figures  of  browsing  beasts,  the 
rumble  of  springless  carts  jerking  along, 
a  peasant  asleep,  his  boots  dangling,  on 
each  one,  the  horses  with  bits  beneath 
their  chins,  thoughtfully  picking  their 
way  and  giving  elbow-room  to  passing 
vehicles.  For  six  miles  a  fair  road,  then 


our  driver  turns  sharply  aside  into  a  mere 
wheel-track  and  for  a  mile  the  little  car¬ 
riage  is  thrown  from  side  to  side  as  it 
plunges  in  and  out  of  the  ruts.  At  last 
something  which  at  home  would  be  called 
a  village  green,  and  two  little  white¬ 
washed  towers  forming  the  end  of  an 
avenue  of  old  birches.  This  is  Count 
Tolstoy’s  famous  place — not,  by  the  way, 
that  he  is  “Graf  Tolstoy,”  to  anybody 
hereabouts,  as  I  found  when  I  hired  the 
carriage.  He  is  just  “  Lef  Nikolaievitch,” 
Leo,  the  son  of  Nicholas.  The  birches 
are  hoary  as  is  their  master’s  head,  and 
great  in  stature  even  as  himself,  and  their 
way  winds  upward,  past  an  exquisite 
willow  grove  by  a  lake,  till  it  brings  you 
in  sight  of  a  white  low-spreading  cha¬ 
teau,  with  roof  painted  green,  like  almost 
all  roofs  in  Russia,  close  set  round  with 
trees. 

Tolstoy  works  in  his  room  till  one 
o’clock,  and  nothing  is  ever  allowed  by 
his  devoted  family  to  disturb  him.  Miss 
Tolstoy,  a  woman  whom  it  is  a  privilege 
to  have  met  even  for  so  short  a  time, 
takes  us  round  the  farm.  It  is  not  like 
the  farms  of  England,  still  less  like  the 
West  ;  it  resembles  more  the  neglected 
homesteads  of  New  England.  The  till¬ 
age  is  of  the  roughest,  two  ploughs  by  the 

400 


barn  door  might  have  been  fashioned  by 
Tubal  Cain,  there  is  no  stored  wealth  in 
a  yellow  stack-yard,  the  fields  are  deserted. 
No  landowner  can  live  by  his  land,  Miss 
Tolstoy  assures  me,  and  estate  by  estate 
is  passing  out  of  the  hands  of  those 
who  inherited  it  from  a  long  line  of  an¬ 
cestors,  into  the  possession  of  the  rich 
merchants  and  manufacturers  of  the  city, 
who  are  careless  as  to  produce  and  seek 
only  the  social  prestige  that  land  alone 
gives  in  old  countries.  She  is  pessimistic 
this  morning,  for  she  goes  on  to  say  that 
even  of  these,  the  third  generation  is 
always  ruined  and  has  to  begin  again. 

“  No  Russian,”  she  avers,  “ever  ‘founds 
a  family,’  as  you  say.  A  man  makes  a 
fortune,  his  son  lavishes  it,  his  grandson 
disperses  it.”  I  suggest  modern  agri¬ 
cultural  machinery,  pedigree  crops  and 
stock,  chemical  fertilizers.  She  shakes 
her  head — “  It  would  never  pay  here.” 
In  his  youth,  Tolstoy  was  a  mad  sports¬ 
man,  from  dawn  to  nightfall  in  the  sad¬ 
dle,  or  with  gun  and  hound.  Then  the 
estate  was  watched  and  cherished  for  the 
chase’s  sake  ;  now  he  thinks  of  it  but  as 
an  appanage  of  the  people  which  he  mo-  J 
nopolizes.  But  here  he  comes,  walking 
sturdily  down  the  narrow  woodway,  his 
dogs  leaping  joyously  about  him. 


401 


Russia  of  To-Day 


The  photograph  reproduced  here  [p. 
394),  which  he  afterward  permitted  me  to 
take,  shows  him  precisely  as  he  appeared 
that  day.  The  prophet’s  brow,  the  patri¬ 
arch’s  beard,  the  peasant’s  blouse — they 
are  familiar  to  all  the  world.  He  was 
wearing  an  old  black  cap,  round  his 
waist  was  a  leather  strap,  his  shoes  were 
unblacked  and  split — a  strange  negli¬ 
gence  in  practice  for  the  advocate  of 
manual  labor,  who  made  himself  a  cobbler 
on  principle.  But  the  lens  cannot  por¬ 
tray  the  infinite  sweetness  of  his  expres¬ 
sion,  nor  the  pen  convey  the  exceeding 
gentleness  of  his  words.  For  him  the 
law  and  the  prophets,  the  ten  command¬ 
ments  and  the  categorical  imperative,  are 
all  comprised  in  the  one  word — Love. 
Who  has  it,  has  everything — religion, 
ethics,  law,  politics  ;  who  has  it  not,  has 
nothing.  “  Write  me  as  one  who  loved 
his  fellowmen,”  would  be  also  Tolstoy’s 
request  to  the  recording  angel,  if  he  were 
not  far  too  modest  to  wish  to  be  written 
down  at  all.  And  his  devotion  to  the 
race  marks  his  attitude  to  the  individual. 
He  greets  you  with  genuine  pleasure,  he 
asks  your  opinion  almost  with  deference, 
he  considers  your  answer  with  respect. 
Your  personality  is  evidently  a  thing  he 
regards  as  sacred.  You  struggle  in  vain 
to  reverse  the  relationship,  but  without 
much  success,  for  his  soul  dwells  apart 
and  you  cannot  get  on  the  same  plane 
with  him — there  is  so  little  common 
ground  between  you.  To  your  question 
about  his  view  of  some  matter  of  current 
interest  he  replies  as  a  mathematician 
might  reply  to  a  question  about  the  rota¬ 
tion  of  crops.  I  asked  him  if  he  sympa¬ 
thized  with  M.  Witte’s  fostering  of  Rus¬ 
sian  manufactures  at  the  expense  of 
agriculture— that  seemed  a  home-query 
that  he  must  consider.  Vain  expecta¬ 
tion  !  He  replied  that  he  did  not  see 
what  difference  it  makes  to  the  engine 
that  does  the  work  whether  it  is  painted 
red  or  green.  Not  until  next  day  did  I 
interpret  that  Delphic  reply.  He  meant 
that  in  comparison  with  the  question 
whether  the  relations  of  man  to  man  and 
man  to  men  are  inspired  by  love,  all 
matters  of  tariffs  and  bounties  are  as 
infinitely  irrelevant  as  the  paint  on  the 
boiler  is  to  the  stroke  of  the  piston.  But 
I  ran  him  to  earth,  so  to  speak,  over  the 
Vol.  XXVIII.— 47 


Dreyfus  case,  at  that  moment  being  re¬ 
heard  at  Rennes.  And  to  my  unspeak¬ 
able  astonishment  I  found  him  a  believer 
in  the  preposterous  “  secret  dossier ,”  a  de¬ 
fender  of  the  egregious  General  Staff,  ac¬ 
cepting  the  guilt  of  Dreyfus  as  an  easier 
alternative  than  the  conspiracy  of  his  fel¬ 
low-officers  against  him. 

“  The  people  are  hypnotized,”  he  said  ; 
“they  know  nothing  and  they  all  shout  the 
same  thing.  After  all,  why  should  I  con¬ 
cern  myself  with  Dreyfus — are  there  no 
innocent  men  in  the  prison  of  Tula  ?  ” 
He  asked  me  to  tell  him  of  the  progress 
of  socialism  in  England,  and  could  not 
understand  my  reply  that  there  was  no 
progress  at  all.  “Then  what  is  said  now 
about  the  Single  Tax  ?  ”  “  Nothing  is 

said  about  it,”  I  replied.  “  It  is  very 
strange,”  was  his  comment. 

So  far  as  the  authorities  are  concerned, 
Tolstoy  seems  to  bear  a  charmed  life. 
The  story  about  the  Tsar  meeting  him  at 
a  railway  station  and  holding  a  long  con¬ 
versation  with  him,  was  a  pure  invention. 
Indeed  when  an  important  official  from 
St.  Petersburg  came  to  Tula  in  the  course 
of  certain  investigations,  and  desired  to 
ask  Tolstoy’s  advice,  the  latter  refused  to 
receive  him.  But  except  the  suppression 
of  some  of  his  writings,  the  authorities 
leave  Lef  Nikolaievitch  alone,  though  his 
views  must  seem  to  them  the  quintessence 
of  subversive  propagandism.  “  Three 
things  I  hate,”  he  said  to  me:  “autoc¬ 
racy,  orthodoxy,  and  militarism,”  and 
these  are  the  three  pillars  of  the  Russian 
State.  I  asked  him  point-blank,  “  How 
is  it  that  the  government  has  never  arrest¬ 
ed  or  banished  you  ?  ”  “I  cannot  tell,” 
he  answered,  and  then,  after  a  moment’s 
pause  he  added,  slowly,  in  a  tone  of  much 
solemnity  :  “  I  wish  they  would.  It  would 
be  a  great  joy  to  me.”  The  general  opin¬ 
ion  among  advanced  Russians  is  that  the 
police  are  restrained  in  this  instance  by 
the  world-wide  scandal  that  any  harsh 
treatment  of  Tolstoy  would  cause.  But  I 
am  inclined  to  think  that  Tolstoy’s  influ¬ 
ence,  which  is  probably  greater  out  of 
Russia  than  in  it,  being  almost  confined 
to  the  spiritual  sphere,  is  not  found  run¬ 
ning  athwart  the  administration  in  practi¬ 
cal  life.  How  should  it  ?  Here,  for  ex¬ 
ample,  is  one  of  his  proposals.  “  My 
land  here,”  he  said  to  me,  when  I  pressed 


402 


Russia  of  To-Day 


him  for  some  immediate  practical  reform, 
“  is  worth  to  me,  let  us  say,  six  roubles 
an  acre  a  year.  I  would  have  the  Gov¬ 
ernment  impose  upon  this  land  a  tax  of 
nine  roubles.  I  could  not  pay  it.  Very 
well,  let  them  take  it  away  from  me  and 
give  it  in  cultivation  to  peasant  families  in 
small  quantities  sufficient  to  support  them. 
They  could  well  pay  the  higher  rate  for 
it.”  Such  views  as  this  do  not  endanger 
the  Russian  social  fabric. 

Tolstoy’s  influence,  indeed,  is  first  that 
of  his  noble  personal  character  ;  and  sec¬ 
ond,  that  of  the  artist.  It  is  in  this  latter 
light  that  educated  Russians  esteem  him. 
I  have  often  heard  people  speak  with  pro¬ 
found  respect  of  his  work  as  a  creative 
artist,  and  in  the  next  breath  laugh  at  his 
theories  of  reform.  What  are  these,  in  a 
word  ?  I  tried  to  summarize  them,  imme¬ 
diately  after  my  conversation  with  him,  as 
follows  :  No  more  nations  and  frontiers 
and  patriotism,  but  the  world  ;  no  more 
rulers  and  laws  and  compulsion,  but  the 
individual  conscience;  no  more  multitu¬ 
dinous  cities  and  manufactures  and  money, 
but  simply  the  tiller  of  the  soil,  eating  of 
the  fruit  of  his  toil,  exchanging  with  his 
neighbor  the  work  of  his  hands,  and  find¬ 
ing  in  the  changing  round  of  natural  proc¬ 
esses  alike  the  nourishment  of  his  body 
and  the  delight  of  his  eyes  ;  while,  like 
some  directing  angel  poised  above,  the 
law  of  love,  revealed  in  Christ,  lights  each 
man’s  path,  and  so  illumines  the  world. 

It  is,  of  course,  a  species  of  nihilism,  for 
realization  of  it  would  mean  the  annihila¬ 
tion  of  science,  of  invention,  of  art,  of  lit¬ 
erature,  but  it  is  the  nihilism  of  the  vision¬ 
ary,  and  has  no  terrors  for  the  autocrat, 
the  priest,  or  the  major-general. 

I  have  dwelt  thus  long  upon  my  visit  to 
Yasnaya  Polyana,  partly  because  Tolstoy 
is  one  of  the  most  striking  of  living  figures, 
and  anything  at  first  hand  about  him,  es¬ 
pecially  now  that  we  can  hardly  hope  he 
will  be  included  in  this  category  much 
longer,  is  probably  of  interest,  and  partly 
because,  in  his  vague  and  facile  idealism, 
he  is  the  typical  Russian.  There  are,  of 
course,  compact  groups  of  Russian  re¬ 
formers  working  directly  for  practical 
ends  which  they  keep  steadily  in  view. 
Among  these  the  bimetallists  are  not  the 
least  numerous  or  energetic.  But  the 


vast  majority  of  reformers,  so  far  as  I 
could  judge  from  my  own  experience,  are 
dreamers.  Almost  every  serious  student, 
for  instance,  is  a  socialist,  but  a  pure  the¬ 
orist,  seeking  the  line  of  development 
along  which  human  nature  can  perfect  it¬ 
self.  No  doubt  of  this  perfectibility  ever 
occurs  to  him.  Half  of  them  label  them¬ 
selves  Marxists,  and  the  other  half — some 
local  name  I  have  forgotten.  When  any 
new  solution  of  the  social  problem  is  ad¬ 
vocated  anywhere,  it  immediately  finds 
disciples  in  Russia.  Thus  during  the  last 
American  Presidential  Election  a  Populist 
group  of  students  sprang  up,  and  still  ex¬ 
ists.  As  Sir  Donald  Wallace  has  pointed 
out,  Russians,  having  received  their  politi¬ 
cal  education  from  books,  naturally  attrib¬ 
ute  to  theoretical  considerations  an  impor¬ 
tance  which  seems  exaggerated  to  those 
who  have  been  educated  by  political  ex¬ 
perience.  “  When  any  important  or  trivial 
question  arises,  they  at  once  launch  into- 
the  sea  of  philosophical  principles.”  So 
far  as  the  students  are  concerned,  the  re¬ 
sult  of  this  national  habit  is  that  they,  the 
best  educated  and  most  intelligent  class  of 
the  community,  exert  little  influence  in  the 
direction  of  change.  When  the  next  lib¬ 
eralizing  movement  comes — and  such  a 
movement  is  being  unconsciously  prepared 
from  above — not  they,  but  an  entirely  dif¬ 
ferent  class,  will  have  constrained  it.  This, 
forecast,  however,  belongs  to  a  later  article. 

The  Russian  has  an  affection  for  things, 
which  are  new,  therefore  when  he  enters 
the  great  Square  of  the  Kremlin  his  en¬ 
thusiasm  vents  itself  upon  the  gorgeous 
green  and  gold  memorial  of  Alexander 
III.  The  foreigner,  on  the  other  hand,, 
though  he  is  charmed  with  the  towers  on 
the  wall  embowered  in  trees,  delighted 
with  the  quaint  monastery  and  the  nun¬ 
nery  where  the  Tsaritsas  are  buried, 
dazzled  by"  the  treasury,  and  duly  im¬ 
pressed  by  the  Great  Palace,  is  not  halted 
by  emotion  until  he  finds  himself  in  the 
painted  gloom  and  amid  the  buried  pa¬ 
triarchs  of  the  little  Cathedral  of  the  As¬ 
sumption,  “  fraught  with  recollections, 
teeming  with  worshippers,  bursting  with 
tombs  and  pictures  from  pavement  to- 
cupola,”  as  Dean  Stanley  said.  But  his. 
emotion  is  not  for  these.  Then  it  is  be¬ 
cause  the  Tsar  is  crowned  amid  these 


403 


Russia  of  To-Day 


“  infinite  riches  in  a  little  room  ?  ”  Not 
at  all.  It  is  because  the  Tsar  crowns  him¬ 
self  there.  He  is  so  incomparably  greater 
than  all  other  men  that  nobody  but  him¬ 
self  can  hallow  and  ordain  him  King.  So 
exalted  and  remote  and  sacred 
is  he  that  not  even  the  chief 
servant  of  God  is  high  enough 
to  place  the  crown  upon  his 
brow.  Therefore,  in  the  holiest 
spot  of  the  Holy  City,  amid  all 
the  pomp  of  the  living  and  all 
the  solemnity  of  the  dead,  sur¬ 
rounded  by  the  royalty  of  the 
world,  while  bells  clash  and 
cannon  roar  and  multitudes 
throng  without,  the  hereditary 
heir  of  the  Romanoffs — though 
but  a  trace  of  real  Romanoff 
blood  is  left — crowns  and  con¬ 
secrates  himself  Emperor  and 
Autocrat  of  all  the  Russias, 
and — for  the  whole  list  is  well 
worth  recalling — of  Moscow, 
of  Kiev,  of  Vladimir,  of  Nov¬ 
gorod  ;  Tsar  of  Kazan,  of  As¬ 
trakhan,  of  Poland,  of  Siberia, 
of  Kherson-Taurida,  of  Grusi ; 

Gosudar  of  Pskov;  Grand 
Duke  of  Smolensk,  of  Lith¬ 
uania,  of  Volynia,  of  Podolia 
and  of  Finland  ;  Prince  of  Esthonia,  of 
Livonia,  of  Kurland ;  of  Semigalia,  of  the 
Samoyeds,  of  Bielostok,  of  Ivorelia,  of 
Foer,  of  Ingor,  of  Perm,  of  Viatka,  of 
Bulgaria,  and  of  other  countries  ;  Master 
and  (Brand  Duke  of  the  Lower  Countries 
in  Novgorod,  of  Tchernigov,  of  Riazan, 
of  Polotsk,  of  Rostov,  of  Yaroslav,  of 
Bielosersk,  of  Udork,  of  Obodsk,  of  Kon- 
disk,  of  Vitelsk,  of  Mstilav,  and  of  all 
the  countries  of  the  North  ;  Master  Ab¬ 
solute  of  Iversk,  of  Ivastalnisk,  of  Kabar- 
dinsk,  and  of  the  territory  of  Armenia  ; 
Sovereign  of  the  Mountain  Princes  of 
Tcherkask  ;  Master  of  Turkestan,  Heir 
Presumptive  of  Norway,  and  Duke  of 
Schleswig-Holstein, of  Stormarne,  of  Dith- 
marschen,  and  of  Oldenburg.  And  it  is 
sober  truth,  that  to  the  majority  of  the 
people  who  live  in  these  places  the  man 
who  thus  crowns  himself  in  the  House 
of  God  becomes  thereby  something  more 
than  human  —  a  tsemi  -  divine  person. 
One  is  reminded  of  the  vigil  of  Fes- 
tus  : 


— those  bright  forms 

We  clothe  with  purple,  crown,  and  call  to 
thrones, 

Are  human,  but  not  his  ;  those  are  but  men 
Whom  other  men  press  round  and  kneel  before — 
Those  palaces  are  dwelt  in  by  mankind  ; 

Higher  provision  is  for  him  you 
seek 

Amid  our  pomp  and  glories  :  see  it 
here  ! 

Behold  earth’s  paragon  !  Now,  raise 
thee,  clay  ! 

There  is  nothing  like  it  in 
the  world  ;  probably  no  such 
claim  has  ever  been  put  forth 
elsewhere  as  is  regularly  made 
in  this  church  when  Tsar  suc¬ 
ceeds  Tsar — certainly  no  such 
claim  has  ever  been  so  widely 
and  so  sincerely  allowed.  And 
to  understand  Russia  it  is  ab¬ 
solutely  necessary  to  appre¬ 
ciate  this  fact.  Unless  you 
realize  that  in  Russia  the  Tsar 
is  everything,  literally  every¬ 
thing;  that  not  only  is  his  will 
law  but  that  it  is  also  heaven- 
inspired  right,  that  his  land 
and  his  subjects  are  his  to  dis¬ 
pose  of  wholly  as  he  will — I 
am  speaking,  of  course,  of  the 
masses  of  the  people  —  you 
will  not  grasp  the  fundamental  condition 
of  Russia  to-day.  In  a  Russian  battle 
not  so  long  ago,  the  artillery,  urgently 
needed  in  front  to  save  the  day,  was 
stopped  by  a  deep  ditch.  The  soldiers 
thereupon  flung  themselves  in  until  the 
ditch  was  full,  and  the  artillery  galloped 
over  their  bodies.  The  incident  illus¬ 
trates  the  relation  of  the  common  peo¬ 
ple  of  Russia  to  their  Sovereign.  As 
you  go  higher  in  the  scale  the  fact  re¬ 
mains,  but  on  a  different  basis.  Official 
rank — tchin — is  the  standard  of  position 
— a  greater  or  less  tchin  determines  a  man’s 
honor  and  influence,  and  of  course  all 
conceivable  tchin  culminates  in  the  Tsar. 
If  you  have  not  yourself  a  high  tchin ,  you 
must  be  “protected”  by  somebody  who 
has.  Officials  of  high  rank  will  hardly 
deign  to  notice  you  at  one  minute,  and 
the  next  they  are  wholly  at  your  service, 
if  they  have  learned  that  you  are  well 
“protected.”  And  in  the  highest  society 
of  all,  whatever  views  they  may  privately 
hold  and  express,  the  Tsar,  as  the  source 


The  Russian  Policeman. 


404 


Russia  of  To-Day 


of  promotion  and  the  fountain  of  honors 
and  emoluments,  dwells  still  alone  upon 
the  heights. 

In  material  things  it  is  the  same.  I  was 
once  discussing  with  a  Russian  administra¬ 
tor  the  military  capabilities  of  the  Trans- 
Siberian  railroad,  and  I  remarked  that 
there  would  not,  be  rolling-stock  enough 
to  convey  masses  of  troops  in  a  short 
time.  “  Every  engine  and  carriage  in 
Russia  would  be  put  there  if  necessary,” 
was  the  reply.  “  But,”  I  objected,  “  that 
would  disorganize  the  whole  commerce 
of  the  country,  and  bring  tens  of  thou¬ 
sands  to  ruin.”  “  You  don’t  understand,” 
answered  this  official ;  “if  the  Tsar  gave 
the  word  to  take  every  railway  carriage 
in  Russia  and  run  it  across  the  Siberian 
Railway  and  throw  it  into  the  China  Sea 
at  the  other  end,  who,  I  should  like  to 
know,  would  prevent  it?  ”  The  influence 
of  the  throne  is  increasing  rather  than 
diminishing,  for  I  heard  many  complaints 
from  educated  Russians  that  certain 
Ministers  of  State  were  taking  their  pro¬ 
posals  direct  to  the  Tsar,  whose  signature 
made  them  irrevocably  law,  instead  of 
submitting  them  first,  as  is  customary, 
to  the  Council  of  Ministers.  The  Tsar 
alone  determined  to  build  the  Trans-Si¬ 
berian  Railway  ;  it  will  cost  five  hundred 
million  dollars.  Tradition  alone  is  more 
powerful  than  autocracy  ;  if  it  were  not, 
the  world  would  have  even  greater  reason 
to  admire  the  aspirations  of  Nicholas  II. 
He  cannot  command  a  policy  which  no 
Minister  will  undertake  to  carry  out ;  he 
is  unable  to  control  and  helpless  to  set 
aside  a  mass  of  statistics  or  unfavorable 
information  which  they  lay  before  him. 
Sometimes,  as  in  the  case  of  Alexander 
III.,  he  is  deliberately  overwhelmed  with 
details  in  order  that  he  may  not  espouse 
principles.  Thus  a  Tsar  might  possibly 
not  be  able  to  preserve  peace  against  all 
the  facts  and  warnings  and  arguments 
brought  to  bear  upon  him.  But  he 
could  declare  war,  by  a  word,  at  any 
time.  And  it  is  to  the  everlasting  honor 
of  Alexander  III.  that  he  set  his  face  so 
steadfastly  against  war,  waged  either  by 
himself  or  by  others,  and  of  Nicholas  II., 
that  his  first  great  act  should  be  to  call  a 
Conference  of  Peace,  although  his  Minis¬ 
ters  both  by  private  word  and  official 
deed  made  it  almost  a  mockery. 


From  ruler  to  ruled  is  a  natural  transi¬ 
tion,  and  especially  so  in  Russia,  where 
there  is  no  middle  class  in  which  the  two 
qualities  coalesce.  Indeed  this  is  the 
most  striking  aspect  of  Russian  society  : 
at  the  top,  the  imperial  family,  surrounded 
by  the  nobility  ;  at  the  bottom,  the  “  com¬ 
mon  people.”  The  development  of  in¬ 
dustrialism,  with  its  rapidly  made  fortunes, 
is  changing  this  condition  so  far  as  the 
large  towns  are  concerned,  but  it  still  re¬ 
mains  true  of  the  country  as  a  whole. 
What  impressions  of  the  Russian  people 
does  one  gather  from  several  months’ 
travel  through  the  whole  empire — a  jour¬ 
ney  of  fifteen  thousand  miles  ?  The  first 
thing  that  attracts  your  attention  in  the 
two  capitals  themselves,  is  a  curious  de¬ 
tail.  All  the  shops  which  offer  wares  to 
the  people  do  so,  not  in  words,  as  with 
us,  but  with  pictures.  The  provision- 
merchant’s  shop  is  a  veritable  picture- 
gallery  of  sausages  and  cheeses  and  bread 
and  butter  and  hams  and  everything  eat¬ 
able.  The  ironmonger  hangs  out  illus¬ 
trations  of  knives  and  forks  and  scissors 
and  chisels  and  foot-rules  and  the  like. 
The  tailor  shows  paintings  of  coats  and 
trousers.  Why  is  this  ?  Simply  because 
a  majority  of  potential  customers  cannot 
read  !  I  noticed  the  same  thing  later 
in  going  over  barracks.  In  one  large 
frame,  for  instance,  is  a  series  of  “  penny 
dreadful  ”  pictures  showing  all  the  duties 
of  a  sentry — what  the  good  sentry  does 
if  a  fire  breaks  out,  if  a  burglar  is(  seen 
entering  a  house,  if  a  citizen  is  attacked, 
if  a  sportsman  comes  shooting  birds  near 
a  powder-magazine,  and  so  on.  Very 
few  of  the  soldiers  can  read,  and  this  is 
the  only  way  to  impart  information.  In 
a  class-room  at  another  barracks  was  a 
schoolmaster  teaching  the  letters  of  the 
alphabet  on  a  blackboard  to  a  large  num¬ 
ber  of  men.  “  This  is  the  class  for  me  to 
join,”  I  remarked,  to  the  great  glee  of 
these  good-tempered  grown-up  children. 
The  Russian  people,  then,  is  illiterate,  in 
the  strict  sense  of  the  word.  And  mill¬ 
ions  upon  millions  of  people  who  read  no 
books  and  no  newspapers,  write  and  re¬ 
ceive  no  letters,  must  inevitably  be  the 
helpless  victims  of  superstition  and  preju¬ 
dice.  This  is,  of  course,  the  fact.  Rus¬ 
sia  is  the  home  of  more  religious  manias 
and  crazy  notions  than  could  be  enumer- 


405 


Russia  of 

ated.  Not  a  month  passes  without  some 
almost  incredible  instance  of  religious 
fanaticism.  1  he  end  of  the  world  is  a 
constantly  recurring  belief.  The  horrible 
skoptsi,  whose  practices  one  cannot  more 
nearly  describe  than  by  saying  that  they 
carry  out  literally  the  exhortation,  “  If 
thine  eye  offend  thee,  pluck  it  out,”  are 
represented  all  over  Russia,  and  in  spite 
of  the  severest  measures  the  police  cannot 
stop  their  abominable  propaganda.  A 
friend  told  me  of  a  travelling  impostor  he 
had  seen,  who  went  from  village  to  village 
offering,  for  a  small  fee,  to  show  some 
hairs  from  the  head  of  the  Virgin  Mary. 
One  person  at  a  time  was  admitted,  a 
small  parcel  was  produced  and  many 
wrappings  taken  off  in  succession,  until 
in  the  last  paper  of  all  the  visitor  was  in¬ 
vited  to  gaze  upon  the  miraculous  hairs. 
Thepaper  was  quite  empty  and  the  peasant 
would  aver  that  he  saw  nothing.  Then 
the  impostor  would  sorrowfully  explain 
that  the  hairs  were  invisible  to  sinful  eyes, 
and  that  only  the  pious  could  see  them. 

In  order  to  escape  the  reproach,  his  cus¬ 
tomers  would  loudly  and  proudly  assert 
that  they  saw  them  clearly,  and  so  he  did 
a  brisk  trade.  The  Russian  Government 
is  anxious  to  change  its  old  Gregorian 
Calendar  to  that  of  the  rest  of  the  world 
(the  Russian  date  is  now  twelve  days  be¬ 
hind  our  own),  but  it  cannot  do  so,  be¬ 
cause  the  peasants  would  be  furious  if  the 
favorite  saints  were  robbed  of  their  proper 
birthdays.  Sunday,  by  the  way,  is  a  per¬ 
son  to  the  Russian  lower  classes. 

Poverty  and  illiteracy  naturally  go  hand 
in  hand.  In  no  other  great  country  of 
the  world  is  poverty — universal,  monot¬ 
onous,  hopeless  poverty  —  the  national 
characteristic  of  the  people.  The  only 
parallels  I  know  are  in  some  of  the  Balkan 
States.  At  almost  any  point  in  rural  Russia 
you  might  think  yourself  in  the  interior  of 
Servia  or  Bulgaria,  except  that  even  in 
these  countries  the  poor  peasant  is  not 
quite  so  poor,  and  his  bearing  is  more  in- 
L  dependent.  Long  train  journeys  in  Rus¬ 
sia  are  depressing  experiences.  Once  past 
the  limits  of  the  towns,  every  village  is  the 
same — a  wide  street  or  two — not  really 
streets,  of  course,  but  deep  dust  or  mud, 
according  to  the  season,  and  from  a  score 
to  a  couple  of  hundred  gray,  one-story 
wooden  houses,  usually  dilapidated,  and  a 


To-Day 

church.  Russia  is  still  first  and  foremost 
an  agricultural  country;  she  produces 
(including  Poland)  two  thousand  million 
bushels  of  grain,  and  grain  products  form 
more  than  half  her  total  exports  to  Eu¬ 
rope  ;  therefore  at  the  right  season  there 
are  great  stretches  of  waving  fields,  and 
later  the  huge  mounds  of  straw,  whence 
the  grain  has  been  threshed.  But  it  is 
in  her  most  fertile  districts  that  the  worst 
famines  occur,  for  famine — a  little  one 
eveiy  year,  a  big  one  every  seven  years 
— has  now  become  a  regular  occurrence. 
And  the  country  as  one  flies  across  it, 
leaves  the  general  impression  of  indi¬ 
gence.  In  sharp  and  painful  contrast  with 
western  Europe,  there  are  virtually  no 
fat  stack-yards,  no  cosey  farm-house, 
no  chateau  of  the  local  land-owner,  no 
squire’s  hall — pitiful  assemblages  of  men 
and  women  just  on  the  hither  side  of 
the  starvation  line.  And,  from  all  one 
learns,  disease  is  rife.  Whole  villages,  I 
was  told  by  men  who  knew  them  well, 
are  poisoned  with  syphilis,  and  the  author¬ 
ities,  gravely  alarmed  at  this  terrible  state 
of  things,  have  appointed  of  late  several 
commissions  of  inquiry  to  devise  remedial 
measures.  Drunkenness,  too,  is  a  national 
vice,  the  peasant  having  his  regular  bout 
whenever  he  has  saved  up  a  small  sum. 
The  new  government  monopoly  of  the 
sale  of  vodka,  which  is  gradually  coming 
into  force  over  the  whole  country,  will,  I 
believe,  exert  a  beneficial  influence  in  this 
matter,  and  much  of  the  denunciation 
levelled  at  it  is,  in  my  opinion,  unjust. 
Nothing  is  more  common  in  the  towns 
than  to  see  a  policeman  drag  a  sleepy, 
half-drunken  peasant  from  his  cart  and  set 
him  to  walking  by  the  side  of  his  horse. 
In  all  Petersburg,  however,  I  never  saw 
anything  precisely  corresponding  to  the 
“  saloon  ”  or  “  bar  ”  of  the  United  States 
and  England.  But  opposite  my  hotel  was 
a  shop  where  tobacco  and  liquors  were 
sold,  and  on  each  of  the  many  occasions 
when  I  went  in  to  fill  my  cigarette-case  I 
saw  children  come  with  empty  bottles,  put 
down  a  few  kopecks,  and  take  the  bottles 
away  half-filled  with  the  fiery  spirit.  The 
vast  void  spaces  of  rural  Russia,  by  the 
way,  may  be  imagined  from  the  fact  that 
every  train  carries  a  ladder  and  tools  and 
electrical  appliances  for  cutting  the  tel¬ 
egraph  wire  and  calling  for  assistance  in 


406 


Russia  of  To-Day 


case  of  accident  or  breakdown.  The  lines 
are,  of  course,  nearly  all  single  ones,  so 
there  is  no  opportunity  to  stop  a  train 
going  in  the  opposite  direction.  My 
photographs  [pp.  399-400]  show  how  this 
experience  happened  to  me  once  on  a  long 
journey. 

Personally,  the  Russian  common  people 
are  attractive.  They  are  simple,  good- 
natured,  kindly,  very  ready  to  be  pleased 
or  to  laugh.  Nobody  can  fail  to  like 
them.  The  ordinary  Russian  policeman — 
the  gorodovoi ,  not  the  secret  police — is  the 
gentlest  specimen  of  his  kind  I  have  ever 
met.  And  the  soldier,  typical  of  his  class, 
is  a  great  child,  and  is  treated  as  such. 
Nothing  is  left  to  his  intelligence  or  his  in¬ 
itiative.  Of  virtues  he  has  many — he  is 
brave,  obedient,  faithful ;  of  wits  he  is 
not  supposed  or  even  desired  to  show  any 
signs.  The  very  words  he  is  to  say  are 
put  in  his  mouth.  If  an  officer  asks  him 
a  question  that  he  cannot  answer,  he  may 
not  say,  “  I  do  not  know  he  must  re¬ 
ply,  “I  am  not  able  to  know.”  When  his 
Colonel  greets  him  collectively,  he  has  one 
answer ;  when  the  Tsar  greets  him  he 
has  another — a  whole  sentence  carefully 
learned  by  heart  and  shouted  in  unison  by 
the  whole  regiment  in  a  long  series  of  ex¬ 
plosive  syllables.  His  pay  is  about  forty- 
four  cents  every  three  months.  From  the 
point  of  view  of  the  military  martinet,  he 
is  ideal  Kano nenf utter — chair  a  canon. 
To  his  number  there  is  no  limit. 

To  this  general  characterization  of  the 
Russian  populace  I  must  add  one  impor¬ 
tant  qualification.  The  extraordinary — 
the  almost  incredible — growth  of  industri¬ 
alism  in  Russia  is  bringing  about  a  great 
and  vital  change  in  the  masses  of  the  peo¬ 
ple.  The  peasant  who  works  with  hun¬ 
dreds  or  thousands  of  his  fellows  in  a  mill 
or  factory  soon  becomes  a  different  being 
from  the  peasant  toiling  on  his  bit  of  vil¬ 
lage  land  and  migrating  hither  and  thither, 
in  seasons  of  agricultural  work,  for  em¬ 
ployment.  This,  to  my  thinking,  is  by  far 
the  most  significant  and  important  aspect 
of  Russia  of  to-day,  and  I  shall  have  much 
to  say  about  it  hereafter.  In  this  place  I 
have  only  endeavored  to  show  the  two 


great  characteristics  of  the  Russian  social 
fabric,  without  an  appreciation  of  which 
no  Russian  question  or  prospect  can  be 
intelligently  judged — autocracy,  the  semi¬ 
divine,  unquestioned,  unbounded  author¬ 
ity  at  the  top  ;  its  counterpart,  illiterate, 
superstitious,  brute-like  dependence,  au- 
tomatonism,  at  the  bottom.  But  Russia  is 
the  land  of  paradox,  and  though  all  this 
would  seem  to  show  that  Russia  is  poor 
and  weak,  I  shall  have  to  point  out,  in 
another  connection,  that  it  would  be  far 
truer  to  say  she  is  in  reality  rich  and  strong. 

I  must  turn  back  for  a  moment  to  old 
Moscow,  before  leaving  the  two  capitals 
of  Russia,  and  their  associations  and  sug¬ 
gestions.  In  a  crowded  street  of  banks 
and  merchants’  offices,  in  the  “  Chinese 
City  ” — all  foreigners  in  Russia  used  to  be 
called  “  Chinese,”  just  as  to-day  they  are 
called  “  Germans” — stands  a  little  mediae¬ 
val  house,  skilfully  and  sympathetically 
restored- — the  home  of  Michael,  the  first 
Tsar  of  Romanoff  race.  And  within  the 
Kremlin  stands  the  Cathedral  of  the 
Archangel  Michael,  the  mausoleum  of  all 
the  Ruriks  and  Romanoffs  till  Peter  built 
his  city  on  the  Neva  and  laid  him  down 
forever  in  its  island  fortress-church,  to  be 
followed  by  all  the  Tsars  unto  this  day. 
In  the  one  place  you  see  the  little,  low, 
many-colored  rooms  (much  like  the  old 
royal  apartments  in  the  Kremlin  palace), 
the  narrow  bed,  the  modest  clothes-chest, 
the  great  wooden  kvass  bowl,  the  green 
leather  boots  with  their  pointed  spur-heels, 
of  Michael  Romanoff;  the  night-dress  and 
the  needles  and  the  flat-irons  of  his  wife  ; 
the  cradle  and  the  playthings  of  his  chil¬ 
dren.  In  the  other  place  he  lies  beneath 
a  wine-red  velvet  pall,  and  six  and  forty 
of  his  race,  similarly  habited  for  eternity, 
are  his  silent  companions.  When  one 
thinks  of  what  these  Romanoffs  were, 
what  they  are,  what  they  desire  to  be, 
and  what  are  the  colossal  and  ever-grow¬ 
ing  forces  they  control,  at  the  motion  of 
a  single  will,  to  turn  their  all-embracing 
and  fanatic  desire  into  fact,  I  know  of 
few  more  impressive  spots  on  modern 
earth. 


